


what remains

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Justified
Genre: Emotional Infidelity, M/M, Multi, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-29 08:12:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17804327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: They send him straight into Boyd Crowder’s open arms.





	what remains

**Author's Note:**

> redjaybathood was saying on tumblr that it would be interesting if Raylan did actually intend to get Boyd out of prison when he slept with Ava in season one, so have a ficlet about that. For a lovely addition, see ohana's reblog on tumblr, [here](http://ohana.tumblr.com/post/182826308769/toli-a-for-redjaybathood-who-said-it-would-be).

Raylan gets sent to the eastern district of Kentucky, the one place in the world he swore he’d never set foot in again. They send him home and straight into Boyd Crowder’s open arms.

Boyd used to arm wrestle, as a kid. He’d come at you and drop his elbow down hard enough to shake your desk, grin with all of his teeth and say, “You think you can beat me, Raylan Givens?” Boyd was never stronger than any other kid in their year, but he could squeeze your hand so tightly that his fingernails dug into your skin, so tightly that your bones felt ground to coal dust under the press of his fingertips. It was how he’d grasped on to Raylan’s hand their last night in the mines. It’s how he holds on when the marshals send Raylan home, opens his arms and sticks out his hand and says, “Would you shoot me, if you get the chance?”

And Raylan does, and his hand aches, and Boyd hits the floor hard enough to shake it. Boyd goes down and Raylan prays for the first time in years, finally finds something worth praying for, and Boyd keeps breathing. Boyd doesn’t die, and Raylan visits the prison hospital, and Boyd reaches out and rests his hand on Raylan’s. Gentle. Boyd talks about God the way he used to talk about money, and Raylan says he’s getting out of Kentucky every time he opens his mouth, and it could be 1990 all over again. Raylan leaves the prison hospital and he means to leave Kentucky and he goes to bed and it’s 1990 in his dreams, Boyd above him or underneath him or beside him in the mines, his hand in Raylan’s.

Raylan’s left Kentucky before. Raylan’s left Boyd Crowder before, too, because Raylan wasn’t staying and Boyd wasn’t going and their middle ground was collapsing faster than the tunnels in the mine. But Raylan was nineteen then, the angriest boy in the world, desperate to go out and make his name, desperate to go somewhere no one knew all that his name implied.

And now—now Boyd talks about God and presses his hand softly to Raylan’s, and Pinter’s wanted to get out of Kentucky for years, Pinter’s willing to be cut into pieces just to make his escape. And Raylan drives four hours to Ava’s house and says, “What would happen if I found something here that made me not want to leave?” and kisses her, takes her to bed.

(He’s gentle about it. Ava’s had enough anger in her life, and Raylan could love her if he let himself. But Ava never dropped her elbow on Raylan’s desk hard enough to shake the earth down in the seam, Ava’s never looked him in the eye and said, “You think you can beat me, Raylan Givens?” Ava never wrapped her fingers tight around Raylan’s hand and pulled him clear of a mine. Raylan touches her and thinks about gentle hands and answered prayers. Raylan stays.)


End file.
